The Wayward West

It's Idaho's turn for a new national
monument (HCN, 5/8/00: The Wayward West). Interior
Secretary Bruce Babbitt wants to create a national monument in the
Great Rift and lava flow areas, west and south of Arco. The
proposed monument would expand Craters of the Moon National
Monument by 618 square miles and also protect the Laidlaw Park
range, 126 square miles of lush sagebrush and wooded steppe area
surrounded by lava flows. Babbitt is working with local ranchers to
map out the boundaries. "We want to stay out of the monument," Bud
Purdy, a Picabo rancher told the Idaho
Statesman. "But if you're going to do this, we want to be
in on the planning." Babbitt promises grazing and hunting will
continue in the designated area.

A Colorado
gold-mining company is suing Montana to
challenge a voter-passed ban on open-pit cyanide mining (HCN,
7/5/99: Mining on the run). Dick DeVoto, head of Canyon Resources
Corp., says the ban wrongly deprived his company of its mining
property near Lincoln, Mont., and, if the law can't be overturned,
he wants $600 million in compensation.

The man who ordered employee Scott Dominguez
to clean a tank containing cyanide had his day in federal court. He
lost (HCN, 4/10/00: Boss must pay for poisoning employee).
Allan Elias was ordered to spend 17 years in
prison and to pay a $5.9 million fine, the harshest sentence ever
imposed for an environmental crime. Elias plans to
appeal.

No matter how many westerns have been
filmed there, Nevada isn't a hotbed of cowboys and
cows. The arid state has 510,000 cattle, far fewer than
New York, according to a state agricultural survey. Minimal
rainfall yields minimal forage for livestock. "This isn't Kansas,"
Doug Busselman of the Nevada Farm Bureau told the Nevada
Appeal. "It takes a lot of land to feed an animal."